Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) painfully awkward missteps since her livestreamed New Year’s Eve video continued in the bellwether state of Iowa last week, where she made some rather compelling statements.
“I am not a person of color,” declared Warren, who wrapped up a three-day barnstorming of the Hawkeye State on Sunday — her first visit as a presumed 2020 presidential contender.
“I am not a citizen of a tribe. Tribal citizenship is very different from ancestry. Tribes — and only tribes — determine tribal citizenship, and I respect that difference,” she also said.
The Massachusetts Democrat announced on New Year’s Eve the formation of an exploratory committee for a 2020 presidential run.
Last fall, in what can only be described as a disastrous attempt to put the issue of her native ancestry to rest before the campaign season, Warren released a video documenting her claimed pedigree, complete with an analysis by a DNA expert.
My family (including Fox News-watchers) sat together and talked about what they think of @realDonaldTrump’s attacks on our heritage. And yes, a famous geneticist analyzed my DNA and concluded that it contains Native American ancestry. pic.twitter.com/r3SNzP22f8
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 15, 2018
After multiple corrections of the numbers by the outlet that originally reported it — The Boston Globe — in the final analysis she was found to be as little as 1/1,024th Native American.
Clearly, the three-month gap between her DNA video debacle and her visit to Iowa was insufficient to wipe it from voters’ memories.
Related: Elizabeth Warren and the Nine Most Incredulous Reactions to Her DNA Reveal
At an event in Sioux City on Saturday, the second day of her Iowa tour, she was asked straight out of the gate, “Why did you undergo the DNA testing and give Donald Trump more fodder to be a bully?”
In addition to noting in her response that she was “not” someone “of color,” Warren also accused Republicans of hurling racial slurs, pointing specifically to President Donald Trump.
It was the president, of course, who long ago began calling her “Pocahontas,” and he recently retweeted a campaign poster-like meme from The Daily Wire that read, “Warren: 1/2020th” — perhaps a reference to her projected chances in the upcoming presidential race.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2019
Invoking the feminist battle cry that Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) inadvertently gave her last February, a hoarse-voiced Warren told a Des Moines crowd on Saturday, “The bad news is I’ve caught a cold. The good news is, nevertheless, I persist,” as the Washington Examiner reported.
Just before she headed to Iowa, Warren livestreamed a video on New Year’s Eve that did not exactly help her appeal to the younger set.
In an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-style bid to appear spontaneous and casual, Warren filmed herself in her kitchen.
At one point she excused herself to grab a bottle of beer, returned, spotted her husband, told viewers how much she adored him, popped the beer open, and took a sip — then chatted about politics as if all of this was the most ordinary thing in the world for her.
It didn’t work.
Fox News’s Outnumbered Roasts Elizabeth Warren For Drinking Beer: ‘Is Alcohol The Answer?’ https://t.co/cMcm1Jk5p3 pic.twitter.com/CAQD1ziP7S
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) January 2, 2019
About as real and lifelike as a cigar store Indian. Elizabeth Warren cracks open a beer and takes questions in Presidential run video | Daily Mail Online https://t.co/xqZ7RGOmPb
— the scrivener (@scrivener68) January 1, 2019
Whereas Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-.N.Y.) uses social media with ease — whether one agrees with her politics or not — Warren comes off as trying too hard.
The beer drinking seemed contrived and her mannerisms appeared forced.
In other words, she seems fake — which is probably the single attribute younger voters most loathe.
Check out this video — and the tweet below it:
Elizabeth Warren is bragging about an “overflow line” at an event of hers that had 300 people while Trump is filling up entire stadiums for his rallies. https://t.co/MuOAnQDLkD
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) January 5, 2019
Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and regular contributor to LifeZette.
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